This may belong in GQ but since it deals with food I’ll put it here first and see what happens. Here’s the story:
Last week I made ceviche. The recipe came from Daisy Martinez’ book Daisy Cooks! and calls for 1 or two habanero peppers. The first time we made this we put in 1 habanero and were disappointed with the lack of heat.
This time we couldn’t find habaneros in the market where we were (visiting relatives in Long Island) so we opted for jalapenos. We tasted the jalapenos to see how hot they were before deciding how many to put in. They were plenty hot on their own so we divided the ceviche into two batches, 1 hot and 1 not. Put three finely minced jalapenos in the hot mix and none in the other. The next day, shortly before the ceviche was to be served we tasted the batch with the peppers and were surprised to find that it had no heat at all. Zero. We then sliced up the remaining three jalapenos and added them to the mixture, this time seeds and all.
Two hours later we arrived at the family reunion for which the ceviche was prepared, drained off all of the citrus juices and put them into a serving dish clearly marking the one that was “hot”. Turns out there was no need to mark it because once again the heat from the jalapenos had magically disappeared. I ate a couple of the jalapeno slices and they weren’t hot at all.
My husband and I decided that all the citric acid in the citrus juice marinade that “cooks” the ceviche also affected the heat in the peppers but this is just a guess on our part. And yesterday when we made a jicama salad with jalapenos and lime juice dressing the lime juice did nothing to curb the heat of the peppers and that stuff had quite a kick to it.
I’m having trouble finding useful information using Google so I thought I’d ask the smartest people I know (that would be you fine dopers).
Anyone know why my ceviche lost its heat and what I can do differently next time I make it?
Peppers do vary greatly in heat one from another, so that may have been some of the reason. Also Habaneros are usually much hotter than Jalapenos so for equivalence to 2 habenaros I’d expect to use 6 or more Jalapenos. Was there any sugar in the ceviche recipe, or was there oil in with the drained off citrus juices? Sugar tends to counteract heat, whilst oil will desolve the capsaicin which is fine unless you drain off the oil.
Jalapenos aren’t very hot at all, especially in a sweet or oily dish. Ya gotta go for the habs. In any case, to boost the heat make sure you include the seeds and such.
I know Jalapenos aren’t as hot as Habaneros but we tasted them before we put them in and they had plenty of heat to make the dish a bit spicy. We put a total of 6 jalapenos in the ceviche and there was no difference between the batch with the peppers and the batch without in terms of heat.
I tasted the jalapeno before it got marinated in the citrus juice and found it plenty hot. Tasted same after it had been soaking for a couple of hours and no heat. Strange. Maybe it was the natural sugar in the orange juice.
ShibbOleth I don’t think ceviche is usually a spicy dish but this particular recipe was supposed to be. It called for 1 or 2 habaneros (which we substituted with 6 jalapenos) it was a really delicious ceviche even without the peppers but if it had a little kick that would have really made it that much better.
To answer the other question, no, there wasn’t any oil or sugar in the ceviche the other ingredients were shrimp, bay scallops, red and yellow bell peppers, red onion, cilantro, salt and pepper and lime, lemon and orange juice. We squeezed the juice fresh rather than use canned or bottled. (We actually burned out our juicer because we were making a double batch for the party and had to juice 24 lemons, 14 limes and 8 oranges, the juicer stopped working about halfway through the limes )
Habaneros are in the range of 200,000 - 300,000 Scovilles. Jalapenos are in the range of about 3500 - 4500. So you’d need about a hundred jalepenos to make up for the 1-2 habaneros your recipe was designed for. If there was something in the recipe that cut a couple of habs down to reasonably-edible levels, it’s no wonder that it managed to completely kill a measly little six jals.
Chronos I guess my real question was about peppers and citric acid. The first time we made the ceviche we used 1 whole habanero, finely minced and there was no discernable heat at all. None. Which is why I was thinking that something about the marinade must have cut the heat in the peppers. Even biting directly into a little piece of pepper released no heat when the dish was served.
Maybe it was a proportion thing but this recipe serves 6 so 1 habanero should have been at least a little hot dontcha think?
I guess the only answer is to make it again and this time use more habaneros and see what happens.
Citric acid doesn’t break down capsaicin, but if I’m reading this right, it does decrease your sensitivity to its heat.
Enzymes from the raw fish might break down capsaicin, in which case the solution is to chop your habaneros more coursely; what cannot be gotten to cannot be destroyed.
The effective heat isn’t really linear on the Scoville values though, because of factors like surface area of the chopped chillis and cooking and marinating time. Also once something registers as hot to your taste further increases in the Scoville value are less noticable, due to taste fatigue. That said if some recipie is made to render Habaneros down to a reasonable level of heat the same recipie will render jalapenos down to no heat at all.
Next time if you are stuch using jalapenos instead of habaneros, perhapse very finely chop one or two jalapenos and add them just before serving to ensure some heat.
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